Brand development

ecommerce website design

Ecommerce website design,

if you’re selling anything—whether that’s sneakers, salad dressing, or something in between—you need to hop on board the ecommerce website train. An ecommerce site offers you the chance to build your brand, connect with more customers, and sell more products—but only if you’ve got the right website design.

Web design is critical when building an ecommerce website. Not only does your site have to look good and feel on-brand, but it also needs to drive your website visitors to take action and, you know… buy your products. But how, exactly, do you do that? How do you design the kind of ecommerce site that will have products flying off your virtual shelves?

When it comes to designing an ecommerce website, simple is always better. The more elements you have on the page (Colors! Banner Ads! ALL THE POP-UPS!), the more it takes away from the entire point of the website—closing a sale.

You don’t need a ton of bells and whistles on your ecommerce website—all they do is act as distraction. Keep your design clear, clean, and simple—and keep the focus on the sale.

2. Make branding a priority

When it comes to shopping online, people want to buy from established brands—not faceless ecommerce sites that look like a front for trying to steal your credit card information.

If you want to build the trust you need to drive serious sales with your ecommerce business, you need to put some serious thought into your branding. Your branding is like the DNA of your ecommerce business; it’s who you are as a company, what you’re about, and how you’re different from your competitors—and it plays a huge part in building a connection with your audience and driving sales.

If you want to get the most from your ecommerce design, take the time to define your brand—and then infuse that branding into your design. If you’re not sure who you are as a brand, that’s ok! You’re just going to want to do a little business soul-searching before you get designing. Ask yourself questions like:

If my brand was a person, who would it be?

If I had to describe my brand in three words, what would they be?

What makes my brand different from other ecommerce shops out there?

What do we do better than anyone else on the market?

Once you know who you are, you can work it into the branding of your ecommerce site. And that branding? It’ll help build trust with your audience—and drive serious sales in the process.

3. Think like a website visitor

If you want your ecommerce website design to connect with your audience, you need to think like your audience. Ultimately, there are just a few things your potential customers want in an ecommerce experience—a site that’s easy to navigate, well-designed, and makes the process of shopping easy, straightforward, and hassle-free.

And if you want your ecommerce shop to succeed, you’d better give them those things.

During the design process, put yourself in your visitor’s shoes. What kind of layout is going to be easiest for them to navigate? How can you organize your products in a way that makes sense for the end user? How can you simplify the checkout process?

When you think like your customer, you can anticipate what they want from your ecommerce store—and then design your site in order to meet those needs.

4. Use color to your advantage

Choosing the colors for your ecommerce site is about more than just saying “Well, red is my favorite color, so…let’s make all the things red!” Color is an extremely powerful tool—and if you understand the psychology behind color, you can use it to your advantage (and drive some serious sales in the process).

Different colors can inspire different feelings, emotions, and actions from people—so, if you want your ecommerce site to convert, you need to use those color inspirations to your advantage.

So, for example, if you want people to make a purchase, make the purchase button stand out with a bright color like red. According to color psychology, red inspires feelings of excitement and passion, which are driving factors behind spending—and studies show that making a button red can increase conversions by a whopping 34%.

Or, if you want to up your credibility, incorporate blue into your web design. Blue is not only a universally loved color, but it’s also been shown to increase feelings of trust, making it a go-to in the business world (there’s a reason the color blue appears in more than half of all logos).

The point is, color is one of the most powerful tools in your design toolbox—and if you know how to use it, it can have a huge impact on your ecommerce design.

5. Use plenty of high-quality images

In the world of web design, it’s common knowledge that images increase conversions (for example, one recent case study showed that incorporating more relevant images into a website design increased conversions by over 40%). And that’s even more true when it comes to ecommerce.

No one is going to buy a product sight unseen. If you want people to buy your products, you need to show them what they’re buying via high-quality product images.

Getting professional images of all your products (and having images of your product from multiple different angles) goes a long way in building confidence and trust in your customers. If they feel confident that they know what they’re buying, they’re more likely to make a purchase. But if there are no images of the product they want to buy (or just a single, low quality image), they’re going to feel more hesitant to make the purchase—and your conversions are going to tank as a result.

Do yourself a favor and have plenty of high-quality images of whatever you’re selling on your ecommerce site. Your conversions will thank you.

planning & strategy

There are millions of web sites on the Internet today with thousands more being added each day. The competition is fierce and in order to be successful, you must stay one step ahead of the game.

design & develop

Although designing a professional web site is an important part of your strategic plan, it is only the first step. Before you begin the actual design process, you must first determine your overall strategy and design your web site accordingly.

test & deliver

We care all those part and in the final point we test everything is working or not. We have test using several browser, several areas, after getting confirmation we deliver to you.

Comprehensive Website Planning

Who This Guide Is For

Written in relatively non-technical language, this guide provides a broad overview of the process of developing a website, from the initial needs assessment through site launch, maintenance and follow up. It is appropriate for:

Small and medium-size businesses;

Organizations;

Institutions;

Web designers, developers, and design/development firms.

Important Note: Throughout the guide, “business” and “organization” are used interchangeably. How you apply the steps in this guide will depend on your role and the relative authority it offers. If you’re leading a web team, it will provide you a more effective process. If you’re less involved with the building process, it will help you understand best practices, the setting of expectations, and allow you to ask more informed questions of web team members — and challenge them if they’re not doing a thorough, conscientious job. Also, because this guide is written for a diverse audience, it uses the language of both “business” and “designer,” and some sections are highlighted for specific project roles. “Designer” refers broadly to the person or team building the web sites.

Also, while this is not a pricing guide, where costs are mentioned, they are in U.S. Dollars.

Who This Guide Is Not For

While you may benefit from applying the ideas within, if you’re building a four-page site for your family reunion or a 5,000-page site for a Fortune 500 company, this guide may be too detailed or way too short, respectively. And since it’s written to be relatively accessible and non-technical, the guide does not address the how-to of writing HTML, using Photoshop, or working in a Content Management System (CMS). Please consult specialized resources for those tasks.

Recognize The Purpose Of Your Website

The purpose of most business websites is to drive sales. While successful sites engage, inform, and educate visitors, their end goal is to convert visitors into leads and leads into customers. In some cases, visitors may purchase tangible or digital products directly from the website, while in others they may engage in some way with the business, eventually purchasing products or services from the business.

If making sales is the end goal of your website, you must always keep this in mind. Too often this key point is forgotten in the quest for design features, boatloads of content and lengthy text descriptions of products and services. Don’t forget the reason you’re building a site in the first place.

If sales are not the goal of your site, determine what is. In most cases, you will still have an action you want site visitors to take: donate, request more information, or volunteer.

Additionally, investing in a website means investing in something that grows with your business. Plan for your website to change over time.

Why Plan?

Planning is essential for most businesses and organizations. Unfortunately, when it comes to websites there is often a failure to plan properly or at all. Sometimes this is due to the ever-busy, dynamic nature of the day to day running of a business — there are so many operational demands that sufficient time is not allotted to the project. Sometimes organizations simply underestimate the time, skill, energy and expertise that goes into building even the smallest website. But often it is because people fail to recognize that planning for the web is just as important as planning for anything else associated with their business.

Your Website Is The Responsibility Of Marketing, Not IT (Information Technology)

Building a website is not a purely technical endeavor. In some companies, especially those slow to recognize the value and importance of online marketing, the website is considered the domain of the IT department (or outside IT resources). This is wrong. Websites are a function of marketing, not IT. The design, structure, and content of your website should be driven by communicators, not technicians. Yes, you’ll need IT to successfully execute the plan of the communicators and keep your site running smoothly. But communicators should be steering the ship. The role of IT in the planning stages and beyond is to help research and support the technology that enables the company’s online marketing goals.

In too many cases, companies are getting in their own way by giving IT authority over their website instead of marketing. In every organization, each department has a specific area of expertise, and it’s vitally important to assign the responsibility for communication to the public to the people who do this best. If you don’t have dedicated marketing resources available to you, spend a little time engaging qualified communicators to help you build your site. Find the right people for each job and then hire them.

The Deck Example

Consider the example of building a deck. If you want to add a deck to your house, you probably won’t call several carpenters and simply ask “How much is a deck?” If you do, the smart answer will be “it depends.” In order to provide you with an estimate, a carpenter will need some details about the project. The more details you provide, the more you work out ahead of time, the more accurate the estimate will be. Of course there is always the potential for things to change during construction, but in general, the adage “measure twice, cut once” holds true for this, and for every other project. A good carpenter will start by asking a series of clarifying questions:

What kind of wood? Cedar? Treated? Or do you want synthetic?

Where exactly will the deck go, and are there any obstacles to work around?

What size and height will it be, and how many levels?

Do you want benches, railings, built-in planters?

Is there clearance to bring special equipment in to your yard?

Do you have Homeowner’s Association (HOA) rules to deal with?

Then there are a host of other things for the carpenter to consider: scheduling, building permits, inspection, maintenance, etc. That’s why a smart carpenter will answer your simple question with “it depends.” Without more information, there’s just no way to to know. Obviously, it makes sense to meet with one or more contractors to address the questions above and more. When you choose a carpenter, they should provide a detailed plan of action that you both sign. As they’re building, they should check in with you periodically and discuss any potential snags in the project.

Surely all this makes sense, but consider what the deck project would look like without a clear plan:

“Hi, Jennifer Carpenter, it’s Juan Homeowner. I need a 20X30′ cedar deck in my backyard. I want it built in two weeks.”

“Okay, Juan. I’ll pick up the materials and get started tomorrow. If you have any questions, just see me in your backyard while I’m working.”

Jennifer Carpenter gets started, drilling post holes for each corner of the deck. She assumes Juan Homeowner has secured a building permit from City Hall, since that’s the way most of her previous jobs functioned.

There’s no building permit

As Ms. Carpenter starts framing the deck, she notices Mr. Homeowner has put a large hose reel against his house and connected it to his faucet. Based on where the deck will sit, the hose reel will have to go. But she’s not sure if he will want to move it somewhere else, or have his faucet rerouted so he can re-connect it and attach it to the deck, which is two feet off the ground. She stops building, and plans to ask Mr. Homeowner what he wants to do when he gets home. She waits…

He’s on a business trip for three days.

When he gets back, Ms. Carpenter reaches him by phone. He’s not happy that he’ll have to have his faucet moved, which now adds unplanned expenses to the project. But that’s not Ms. Carpenter’s fault, she’s not the plumber. She’s just putting the deck where he asked.

Once the deck is framed, she starts building a railing for one side. This wasn’t discussed initially, but she sees Mr. Homeowner has small children around and thinks this is a good safety feature. Mr. Homeowner comes home one day and is happy to see great progress on his deck, but then he notices the railing.

“What’s this?”

“I added a railing to this side, since you have kids. It’s a good safety feature.”

“I don’t have small children.”

“But I saw them playing in your front yard.”

“Oh, those are the neighborhood kids. My kids are in high school.”

“Well, a railing is a good feature.”

“Yeah, but can you make it shorter, and put a bench next to it?”

“I didn’t buy enough wood for a bench, and the railing is already drilled and attached. I’d have to remove and re-cut it. Also, we didn’t talk about a bench.”

“Well, I’d like a bench here.”

“That will take more time. I won’t be able to get this done by your two-week deadline if we add the bench. Plus, I’d have to charge you for the extra wood.”

What began as a “simple project” becomes a series of headaches due to failure to plan and to communicate. Jennifer Carpenter also has to bill Mr. Homeowner for all the unforeseen issues: for the extra material, for her extra time, and for all the unanticipated tasks that have gone into building this (now) complex deck project.

From a web professional’s perspective, developing a 50-page website for six unique stakeholders is far more complex than building a rectangular deck. Also, a deck is a physical structure built in stages. You can look out the window and see the progress. By contrast, a website has a number of technical and administrative steps which, while incredibly important, are effectively invisible to the business.

A caveat… and the “waterfall” method of development

When I worked at an insurance company, business analysts, part of the IT (Information Technology) department would write project charters — long, painfully boring documents which attempted to outline every possible aspect of a website. I really hated these documents. I preferred to work much more seat-of- the-pants. In part, this was because unlike print material, websites are flexible. Once a printed document has gone to print, its content is not going to change without starting all over again — printing new physical documents. Websites are different. The content in a website will change over time, at will. The idea that every single minute aspect of a website could be pre-planned on paper was ludicrous.

IT departments that handle large projects often use something called the “waterfall” method of development. The idea is that the phases of development flow downward through the steps, toward the completion of the project, with each previous stage effecting the next one. In theory, this isn’t a bad idea at all. But in practice, this can create the side effect of over-specification, of detailing each and every minute part of the project from top to bottom. Absolutely everything is specified, down to the point size of the type, the line length of page headers, and exactly how a simple photo gallery will work. This is my view of the waterfall method: if you’re building a banking application that transfers money in and out of customer accounts, you’d better be sure your code is perfect. When dealing with people’s money — debits and credits — there is zero allowance for error. For projects this critical, it makes sense to specify everything you’re going to do in great detail before writing a single line of code.

However, as I said earlier, websites are flexible. So how do we reconcile the need for clear and detailed specifications with the inherent flexibility of the medium? We can split the difference. By following the process outlined below, we can create a set of content and design specifications that greatly reduce the potential for mid-project glitches, while creating a framework that allows the site to grow with time. In fact, we can plan for expansion, allowing, for example, a news section to handle ten news items or two hundred. When properly implemented in a Content Management System (CMS), a website will allow site editors the flexibility to swap out key photos, change titles, headers, reorder content, etc. — but all within the framework established in the planning stage.

Getting Agile

You may also consider an approach called Agile Development. While primarily associated with software development, Agile concepts can be applied to website creation as well. It can be just as successful as following a detailed plan, but it needs to suit the skills, approach, and temperament of the project participants.

Keep in mind that Agile development can take a little longer (and thus cost a little more) than traditional methods, and if you tend to lose focus, this probably isn’t the best way forward. But for more complex projects it can be a very effective way of building a website. If you decide you want to go this way, make sure to talk to your creative team about their comfort level with Agile. Some web professionals are more at home with this method than others.

The Value Of Paying For Planning, Needs Assessment

Some businesses seeking an estimate for their site will have a general idea of what they want to do and possibly have developed a simple site map or list of pages. Others, especially organizations, will offer an RFP (Request for Proposal). In most cases, none of these items are enough, by themselves, to allow us to generate an accurate proposal. Even in the case of a multi-page RFP, there is often not enough useful detail from which to create a proposal and estimate. If a client just wants a very broad ballpark figure, we can usually do this. But to arrive at an accurate cost, much additional information is needed.

Enter The Needs Assessment

A needs assessment is the process of figuring out where a business has been, where its going, and how to get it there. That’s pretty broad, so let’s break it down.

Please, please, no more RFPs

While created with good intentions, RFPs are often a bad idea both for the issuing party and for web firms responding to them. Business and organizations who are used to the RFP process should realize that for a complex and creative project like building a website, this approach is often inappropriate. (It works just great for more static creative work, like print advertisements, but for flexible digital endeavors, it’s just not effective.) In many cases, asking a web designer to craft a detailed response to an RFP is like asking an architect to create blueprints for a house “so we can see what you would do for us.” This is akin to asking someone to work for free (on “spec”), and such a process can be demanding and unfair.

Worse still, when a business has already chosen a designer, RFPs may be issued simply to go through the motions, pretending to seek competitive bids, giving the appearance that rules were followed. This bypasses the critical needs assessment, forcing designers to invent numbers and timelines without enough information to do so. It is a waste of time and energy.

When RFPs are sent to a large number of designers, the only thing a response indicates is a willingness to respond to an RFP, not that designer’s suitability for the project.

Skipping The RFP, Assessing Needs

Businesses can benefit greatly from a needs assessment. Twenty hours spent on a needs assessment can easily save forty hours of development time during the building of the site.

Discovering the true needs of a business halfway through a project is a recipe for headache, extended development time, cost overruns and missed deadlines. As you’ll read below, failure to recognize and pay for proper planning creates big problems.

Proper planning is an investment in a headache-free development process, and the first step to planning is figuring out what is needed from top to bottom in as much detail as possible. That’s the purpose of a needs assessment, and it’s a vitally important step in developing any website.

What Happens When You Fail To Plan?

The designer or developer is forced to make assumptions, which may or may not be correct, as to how certain content will appear on the site. (The way content is displayed effects the way the pages are built, which effects the complexity of development.)

The amount of back-and-forth communication about trivial matters can be multiplied many times over. (Clarifying miscommunication takes longer than getting it right the first time.)

Backtracking causes delays and missed deadlines. (“Do-overs” often mean that developers are doing the same things twice in different ways.)

Work that falls outside the original scope of the project creates cost overruns. (More is more. This is called “scope creep” and can be a serious issue, even in small doses.)

Confusion and client dissatisfaction are the byproducts of the shoot-from-the-hip process. (Face it, nobody is happy when things go wrong.)

Anything but a simple tire swing.

The end result: a website that falls short of its goals,yields poor ROI (Return On Investment), and disappoints the people it was created to serve.

Needs Assessment

Three important things to remember:

Unless you’re building a tool exclusively for internal communication, your website is not for you—it must meet the needs of its audience.

A website is not a one-time event. It is a flexible, extensible communications tool which reflects, negatively or positively, on your business. For many businesses, it is the key touch point between the business and their customers.

This is where we can potentially start using business-speak, i.e., “assemble your key internal stakeholders.” That’s another way of saying “get everyone together who has something valuable to contribute.”

The site must work in concert with the overall marketing

A website needs assessment may overlap with other efforts and approaches of your marketing department. That’s fine. In fact, established branding and marketing of your business should inform the structure and design of the website. A good website can’t happen in a vacuum. Continuity and consistency across all your marketing endeavors, digital and otherwise, are crucial to the perception that you are professional and that your business should be taken seriously.

We’ve all seen this done incorrectly — a nice website followed by a terrible brochure, or vice versa, and lack of continuity always makes a negative impact. Even if customers/users can’t quite put their finger on what’s wrong, they know something isn’t quite holding together, and they’ll judge the business for it. Most people don’t stop to think “Oh, they must have hired a professional web designer, but just didn’t bother to update their brochure, maybe they’re working on that.” It just feels wrong.

Cost and timeline

Generally speaking, a proper needs assessment will cost between 5 and 15 percent of your total project budget, and take between 10 to 30 percent of the total project time. Of course, this assumes you have determined a realistic budget and timeline for your project. It’s fine if you haven’t — sometimes you don’t know what you don’t know. A good needs assessment can help you figure this out.

The needs assessment: intake

In your intake meeting, you’ll want to address a series of questions. Start with the core ideas, values, messages and offerings of your business, then drill down in to more details.

There are many valid approaches — some very formal and precise, and others looser and more intuitive. In any case, if you’re leading this process, you should make sure you have a set of key questions prepared.

The following comes from a brief we use to learn the basics of a client’s project. In our experience, at least three new questions are generated for each question the business owner answers. If this is an internal company project, you can and should go through the same process, and ask and answer the same questions. The answers might surprise you. Note: the following questions apply to a small business, but can be easily modified to suit a nonprofit, institution or other types of organizations.

Mission statement: who are you and what do you do (or substitute one-paragraph company/or description).

Why was your company/org created?

How would you like to be perceived through your website?

What is the single most important thing visitors want from your site? For example: find new products, register for a course, join a mailing list. Note: Try to consider this from the customer’s perspective. This is not about what you want for the company, i.e., more sales, but what your visitors want from the site.

What is the single most important thing you want to convey on your site? From the perspective of your company/org.

Describe your target audience.

Who is your competition? (A competitive review should follow: look at three sites from similar or competing businesses. See where each website succeeds and fails.)

Why should clients chose your products or services over the competition?

How will you judge if this is a successful project?

List three or more websites you like.

List three websites you don’t like, and indicate why for each one.

There’s no hard rule for how many questions you should ask, or how long this should take. However, if you finish the process in 40 minutes and there are no follow-up questions, you’re not digging deep enough.

In fact, if you’re doing your job right, each time you go through this process, the questions are going to be different as you tune into the needs of the business, listen to their responses, and identify further areas needing clarification or uncover opportunities worth exploring.

Each business and each project is different.

Keep ‘Em Talking

The intake process is all about the business owner. It’s very important here to listen carefully, take good notes, and keep following threads and tangents if they are yielding useful information. Resist the urge to start offering solutions right away. Keep your focus on learning everything you can about the client’s business, their audience, and message. Solutions come later. You need all the questions to come up with the best answer.

Depending on the amount of time you have for the intake process and the scope of the project, you may want to return for one or more subsequent meetings to explore further. Some clients will resist this, as they are typically focused on the day-to-day challenges of running their organization. They may say they don’t have time. Reinforce that you must thoroughly understand the problem before offering the solution. Whether the website is for a business, nonprofit, sports team or science foundation, it should serve the needs of the client and their audience.

Often the only way to get this information is more discussion. If you still have questions or need more information to make informed decisions and recommendations for the assessment, forge ahead until you’ve got as much information as you need. You don’t want to be a pest, but it’s very important that you stay focused and follow through on every possible thread that comes up in the intake process. If you handle this process with grace and humor, clients will usually understand the importance of this period of inquiry.

Since your home page can only focus on so many points at once, it’s very helpful to distill what your business does into a sentence or two. For example:

“We make project management better.”

“Beautiful, sustainably produced furniture for home and patio.”

“Building understanding about the impact of mental illness.”

This is different from a mission statement, though it can be developed from one. When you distill the essence of your business in to a short statement, this can be the starting point for how you present it and can make a huge difference for the creative team as they delve into the soul of the organization and figure out how to best present the business to the world.

In some businesses, key employees or managers hold a wealth of experience that could be helpful to the project, but you may not meet these people right away. It can be helpful to ask the business owner: “Is there anyone else I should be talking to about this?” Make sure you’re not leaving out the one person who can enlighten you and change the path of the assessment.

“Uh, we don’t really know who we are.”

Some businesses, especially those lacking a strong brand, may take some coaxing to reveal who they really are. Probing questions can help. For example, if you ask a business owner who their best customers are, find out why — what makes these customers so valuable, how did they find them, and what are they doing to find more like them?

Wait — You’ve Got No Brand, No Logo?

The value of an established visual identity or brand in the creation of a quality website cannot be overstated. Small businesses often dive in to website creation without paying any attention to branding. Suffice to say, if you do not at least have a professionally designed logo, you have not established a brand. A professionally designed logo is not something sketched on a napkin. It is not a font you found inside of Microsoft Word. The skills required to make a professional logo are very specific and you’ll need a professional with branding experience to do this for you.

What Is A Brand?

The visual representation of your business.

What people think of or visualize when they hear your business name.

The expression of the unique characteristics which represent your business.

Brand Guide

At bare minimum, a brand should have a (professional) logo and color palette. A more complete identity includes:

Short statement outlining the mission or purpose of the business and defining its audience.

Headline and body fonts.

Guidelines for use of photography.

Copywriting guidelines.

Additional design elements (glyphs, textures, shapes).

Why Your Brand Is So Important

It sets the stage for everything you produce — visually and otherwise.

It sets you apart from other businesses.

It is authentic, a manifestation of the cultural values of what is being represented. If it’s not consistent with these values, it may appear inauthentic (see surf shop vs. bank example, which follows).

Speaks to integrity. A reflection of all the things you are.

Why Your Brand Is So Important To Building A Website

One of the first steps in the web design process is to decide on a visual look and feel. Without at least minimal branding, your designer is starting completely from scratch, and essentially has to create a brand identity for your business on the fly. This may or may not be consistent with the image you want to project. Development of your brand needs to come before a website, because the site is an extension of the brand and not the other way around — don’t put the cart before the horse.

My Favorite Example: A Surf Shop vs. 110-Year-Old Bank

Both categories of business have strong identities established to suit both the products and services they offer, and their particular client base.

Proceeding Without A Brand

Inevitably, some businesses simply refuse to invest in a brand or insist that the fuzzy logo they “designed” in 1992 is perfectly suitable as the basis for their $15,000 website. Or they may want to design their site and then paste in a logo at the end of the process. By the way — if the following logo examples look like they took about five minutes to make — you’re exactly right, they did.

Establish The Brand, But Don’t Provide Design Solutions

While working through the needs assessment, participants may be tempted to suggest design solutions, especially for businesses who have weak or non-existent brands. Resist. A needs assessment will be more effective when focused on problems instead of solutions. You can’t offer a solution until you know what the problem is.

Choosing A Domain Name

Most existing businesses have a domain name. If the business is new, choose the shortest, most easily pronounceable name you can find. As they say about men, or women, “all of the good ones are taken.” That’s the case with domain names, too. You may have to get creative. For example, Fitzpatrick & Sons Construction Supply may prefer fitzpatricksupply.com, but if that domain is taken, consider fitzsupply.com or fitzconstructionsp.com.

Say the name out loud to see if it’s clear or potentially confusing. Type it out and look for visually confusing combinations of letters (sassyssamosas.com) and make sure it reads well as well as sounding good. Spelling out long business names can lead to typos when entered in a search bar, which is why fitzpatrickandsonscontructionsupply.com is not a good choice.

While search engines are very quick to correct spelling mistakes and say “do you mean {X}?” there’s still value in having a domain name that’s brief.

A Few Words About Domain Names

I highly recommend taking a moment to learn about the basics of names and how they work. A little bit of literacy about how domain names are administered, where they come from, what extensions (.com, .co, .org) mean and how they’re used can keep you out of a world of trouble later on.

Take a moment and do a little research. Changing your domain name after it’s established online is a headache which should be avoided at all costs. The time choose your domain name is during the preparation period, not after the site has been built.

New TLDs

TLD stands for top-level domain, as in .com, .net, .biz, etc. However, in 2014, ICAAN, the agency which regulates TLDs, approved the addition of a whole host of options, from .auto to .vegas. Which TLD to choose is a target-market consideration. A .com TLD comes with certain connotations—it may feel more traditional or trustworthy, while other available TLDs for your site may be easier to remember. You’ll have to decide if you want to stick with a more traditional TLD or try something novel, and your designer may advise you here. Time will tell if these new TLDs become commonly recognized and widely used.

How to Write a Marketing Plan

Your marketing department might encompass digital marketing, print advertisement, ppc management, website optimization, visual identity/branding, event marketing, etc. As a digital marketing agency, this marketing plan discussion will focus mostly on the digital marketing aspect, but the strategies and concepts in this post can be expanded to encompass your entire marketing department. For today’s marketers, creating an integrated marketing plan that includes social media marketing, content marketing, email marketing and SEO — all tenets of a strong digital marketing, or inbound marketing strategy — is necessary in order to attract and convert buyers in a digital age.

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Maybe you work for a large corporation and have been tasked with developing next year’s marketing plan, or perhaps you are launching a new start-up and need to craft a plan from scratch. Maybe it’s been 20 years since you graduated from business school or wrote your last marketing plan, and realize that times have changed a bit. Whatever the case, the steps you take today to create a functional and straight forward marketing plan will lay the foundation for your year ahead, helping you to get results that are measurable and quantifiable.

But before we dive in, let’s take a quick look at an overview of how the marketing plan should be structured.

List your Goals First While developing goals may not be the first step you actually take when forming your marketing plan, listing them first on your final marketing plan document sets the stage for everything to come.

Explain Your Research Research will be the foundation of your marketing plan and should include: 1.Competitive Analysis 2.SWOT Analysis – This is an analysis of your company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, standard to any business or marketing plan. 3.Understanding Your Buyer Personas – This will include the demographics of the buyers you are targeting as well as include any personas you want to avoid. 4.Learning Your Buyers’ Buying Cycle – Understanding how, when, where and why your target market buys is key to converting leads.

Define KPIs and Measurement Methods After all the heavy lifting is complete, your strategy is in place and you have begun pulling together and implementing your tactical plans, it’s time to measure. In fact, even before you have implemented your strategy you should be measuring to establish your baseline. What have you done in the past and what were the results? How can those strategies shift to improve ROI? Measurement should be done before, during and after — throughout the year, on a monthly or even weekly basis — to ensure your plans are showing positive results and to shift them if they’re not.

List Overarching Strategy and Tactical Plans Having tactical plans and calendars gives life to your ideas and strategy. Try focusing on 4 or 5 main tactics for the year and create execution plans around these tactics. Keep in mind that your tactics may or may not be the same as your goals. If your goals are high-level, i.e. to increase traffic by 50%, then your tactic would drill down more on how to get that result — and be as the name implies, more tactical.

Marketing Strategist at OpenhostGoogle considers page load time as a factor in ranking sites in its search results

When planning effective advertising of your brand, keep user experience in mind‘ high-speed internet ’expect fast-loading web pages, but when your website has a lot of embedded videos, it slows down the loading speed.

Impact of Web Design on User Experience

“When planning effective advertising of your brand, keep user experience in mind. There are likely to be multiple clicks on your URL simultaneously from different users”, says Brendan Wilde, Digital Marketing Strategist at Openhost. “Therefore, your website needs to be designed to accommodate all of them at any time. Make sure the loading speed doesn’t slow down – regardless of the device being used.”

Google considers page load time as a factor in ranking sites in its search results. Therefore, users with high-speed internet also expect fast-loading web pages, but when your website has a lot of embedded videos, it slows down the loading speed. Unnecessary plugins, widgets and large images also affect page load time. This has a drastic effect on user experience. Your main aim is to satisfy the user. Therefore, build your website with that in mind. Don’t keep uploading flashy images or videos that add no value to the page.

Videos and images say a thousand words, but you wouldn’t want to lose a thousand visitors who are tired of waiting for those files to load. You will need to compress the large files and delete those that are not important to the page.

When putting up ads, place them either at the bottom or top of the page. Users get turned off when they see ads taking up the whole screen. This makes it difficult for them to navigate through your page easily. You can either use sliding ads or include only relevant ads in the simplest manner. Keeping all these factors in place will help you execute the right digital marketing strategy making your company succeed online.

Reputation-management-web-expert

Company247 is crucial now more than ever in maintaining a successful business brands reputation. Online Reputation Marketing or Online Reputation Management (ORM) as it is also known as, is becoming increasingly vital for businesses, whether you are a small business or an international business. Controlling your online presence and making sure that you are one step ahead of your competition can be the difference between making a sale or not.

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WEB DESIGN EXPERTS 247

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Manage Your Online Reputation

Where Your Reputation is Formed

There are several review sites that exist solely for allowing your customers and clients the opportunity to post their experiences with your business, and these sites are where your online reputation can be made or broken. Online review sites include Foursquare, Yelp, Bing, and Qype, among others; even Google Places provides a dedicated space on your Places page for customer reviews. In addition to the review sites, your online reputation is also affected by comments in industry forums, threads on social media sites, online articles, blog posts, public record documents, and many more.

Why You Must Manage Your Online Reputation If you don’t do it, someone else will. Even if your business is a small mom and pop shop with only a very basic website, you must keep this statistic in mind: 90 percent of all consumers research the Internet when looking for businesses to deal with. That means that if you are not proactively managing your own business reputation, then it will be managed by the actions of others. Considering the previously mentioned statistic, consider the implications of even one negative review about your business, especially if that is all people find when searching for you.COMPANY247 , Management provide the following internet marketing services: • SEO (Search Engine Optimization) • Online Reputation Management & Marketing • Online Video Marketing • Social Media Marketing • SEM (Search Engine Marketing) • Website Design

How to Assess the Current State of Your Online Reputation Simply search the web for your business name and see what results you get. (You may also want to search your name, the names of your high-profile employees, your brand, and your product/service.) You need not look past the first page of search engine results, as 99 percent of your customers will never get past that page.